


Gimlet, No Bitters

by Martha



Category: Raymond Chandler - Philip Marlowe series
Genre: M/M, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2008, recipient:enigel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-08
Updated: 2011-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-14 13:59:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/149920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Martha/pseuds/Martha





	Gimlet, No Bitters

  
Written for: enigel in the Yuletide 2008 Challenge  


"I never saw any of them again -- except the cops. No way has yet been invented to say goodbye to them."

Raymond Chandler (1953: _The Long Goodbye_ )

But it was two long months before I laid eyes on Sheriff Peterson again. He was at the front of the Santa Claus Lane Parade down in Hollywood, riding on a big white stallion who danced and tossed his head to make the silver trim on his bridle jingle and flash. The sheriff was wearing a Mexican sombrero with silver thread and two bandoleers crossed over his chest. His eye was steely and his chin was only a little soft, and that afternoon, the taxpayers of Los Angeles County must have felt like they were getting their money's worth.

They were right about that much. Sheriff Peterson was doing a lot more good escorting Santa Claus than he ever would sitting in his office. That made me think that two months was a long time for the guardians of civil order to have left me alone, too. Apparently there hadn't been any unfaithful wives left dead in the guesthouse, no tough guys overstepping their own pas de deux with the local police. Nobody had even gotten bored enough just to come knock me around for the fun of it, and given the sunny dispositions of your average beat cop, that seemed the most unlikely of all. The more I thought about it, the more it started to bother me, and not all the silver buckles on that white horse's fancy saddle could make me feel better about a story to which I had already written the conclusion.

I should have gone home then, but the only thing waiting for me there was a chess game I had just set up and suspected I was already losing to that Prussian mathematician, Emanuel Lasker. So instead I wound up at Victor's. I told myself I was going to write The End in big red letters for once and for all by having that last gimlet for Terry.

I should have known better. Novelists never make a good end in this town.

It was a little later than I generally liked to visit my bars, and it was crowded with folks working too hard on their Christmas spirit. The habitual drunks were serene in comparison, certain the booze would take them where they needed to go. It was the holiday drinkers who were jittery as tourists on a streetcar, guzzling their drinks like they might wind up stranded on the wrong end of Chinatown if they loosened their grip.

I had to elbow my way through to get to the bar. Arranged among the bottles were little elves in red coats. Green and red glass balls were stacked over the shelves. A woman in gold lame that made her look like a Christmas ornament herself knocked her pointed elbow into my ribs as she backed away from the bar. The drink in her hand was no-nonsense amber, just an ice cube and a cherry on a toothpick to make it ladylike. "Excuse me, ma'am," I said, and she stepped on the toe of my shoe.

The bartender recognized me. The room was too busy and too loud for conversation, but he smiled and said, "Gimlet, no bitters?" cocking his finger at me when I said yes.

I watched him make it. Half gin, half Rose's Lime, pale green in the glass. I paid him when he handed it to me because I wasn't planning to have another, and I wished him merry Christmas because somebody ought to have one. There wasn't room at the bar to stand and drink, so I found a table too close to the front door. There were strands of tinsel hanging from hooks nailed into the window frames.

I drank my gimlet and said my last goodbye to Terry. He had been a good man in his way. With that weird pride of his, he was at his best when he was beaten. Weak and gentle and as carefully ethical as a good hearted whore. No thanks to him I wasn't dead two or three times over, and I missed him like crazy. I drained my drink and when I put it down on the table, Terry himself was walking outside past the window.

I got up fast, but there was a muddle at the front door. The woman dressed like a Christmas ornament was arguing with a gentleman in a baby blue suit. Her voice was as pleasant as breaking glass and his rumbled and muttered like ancient plumbing. The two of them could put Bogart and Bacall out of business, but I didn't have time for either one. I stepped past blue boy and as predictable as rain in February, his meaty hand fell on my shoulder. "Hey, buddy," he started. I shook him off, and when he grabbed for me again, I pulled the door open just a little too enthusiastically and cocked him on the noggin hard enough to send him to his knees. The Christmas ornament shrieked and swung at my eyes with her nails, but I was already through the door by then, and not being a gentleman, I slammed it in her face.

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Evening had fallen. The street was almost empty and there was no sign of Terry. I walked to the end of the block, turned back, and went as far as the alley that led to the delivery entrances.

There he was. Leaning against the brick and stucco wall, just past a line of battered garbage cans. I could make out his profile from the streetlight at the end of the block. The surgery had flattened the line of his nose a little, but it couldn't change the elegant slump of his shoulders. He was holding a cigarette, rolling it between his fingers. He didn't turn his head, but he knew I was there. "Do you have a light, señor?"

He was drunk. He wasn't slurring too much, but not a trace of his careful Spanish accent remained. I stalked down the alley and grabbed his elbow, yanking him around to face me. He dropped his cigarette.

"Did they scramble your brains while they were fixing your face?" I barked at him. "What the hell are you doing here?"

He laughed quietly and bobbed his head like this was all a lark. "I got lonely," he said, as if that was any sort of explanation. "I just wanted to see a friendly face again."

I shook him a little. "Forget it. There aren't any friendly faces in this town. What's more, this ain't 1945. The cops aren't going to ignore a GI who's just looking for a helping hand. Not in this part of town where you might scare the tourists. And once they figure out who you are, that'll be the end of everything."

He wasn't listening to me. "Is that what you're looking for, Marlowe?" he asked in his soft voice. "A helping hand?" He swayed and before I could stop him, he was kneeling in the road. He nuzzled his face into the front of my trousers like a nursing kitten, and I felt a flash of heat from the top of my scalp down to the balls of my feet. For one crazy minute I was ready to crowd him up against the cold brick wall, and the rest of the world be damned.

Instead, I dragged him to his feet, and I wasn't nice about doing it. His hat fell off, exposing his dyed black hair. I was so angry I didn't think about what I was saying. I didn't much care. "I guess drinking gimlets isn't the only thing you learned to do in London."

"Rum, buggery and the lash?" He laughed at me. "I wasn't in the navy."

Where's your car?" I demanded, and shook him when he didn't answer me fast enough.

"I don't have one. I took a cab."

"Come on," I said. "I'm driving."

"No, thank you. I believe I'll wait here for another gentleman who might be willing to help out a friend." He swayed and would have fallen if I hadn't caught him and propped him against the wall again.

"I hate to break it to you," I said, and I was snarling. "You're not going to find yourself any gentlemen friends out here. And if the cops pick you up, you won't survive long enough to make it to the drunk tank."

"Your concern is very kind," Terry said formally. "I'll be fine." His knees started to buckle. I caught his shoulders, but I was so sore by then I was ready to ruin his fancy plastic job for him. He raised his chin, like he was daring me to pop him one. Like he knew how bad I wanted to.

The surgeons had grafted a nerve in his cheek so it didn't hurt him so much anymore. Remembering that made me feel kind of sad and sick all of a sudden, and instead of hitting him, I tucked his arm under mine and I dragged him back to the street. He didn't fight me. When we got to the car I shoved him into the back-seat. He fell over sideways and didn't move or say a word the whole way up to Laurel Canyon.

I parked at the foot of the redwood stairs that wound up to my front door. Not a peep from Terry. I opened the back and looked at him, still curled up and and dead to the world. I pulled him up, hooking his elbow around my neck. It was a long way to the front door, carrying someone who couldn't do very much to help. I tried to think of him as Señor Maioranos, because the Terry I knew had climbed into an airplane in Tijuana and never come back, but by the time I got him into the living room I had forgotten again. I dumped him on the sofa and put a rug over his legs. It was just like the first time we met. It made me feel so damned romantic I wanted to cry. Or maybe push him out the window.

So I wound up mounting a spike attack against Mr. Lasker's dragon Sicilian that night after all. Terry slept on the sofa, his knees pulled up, not even snoring. He was as tidy and polite sleeping off a drunken stupor as he was a chaos and a mess when he was awake. He finally woke up a little past midnight. I was just putting away the chess pieces. He sat up and looked around himself, then looked at me. "I am afraid I have been a lot of trouble to you," he said carefully.

"Yes," I said. "You have been. Do you want a cup of coffee?"

"Do you have anything stronger?"

"I had two bottles of champagne I had been saving," I told him, feeling mean. "But I drank them with Linda Loring three months ago. She showed up at my front door with an overnight suitcase and asked me to marry her."

I don't know what response I was expecting from him, but he didn't flinch. "In that case," he said, "coffee would be fine. Thank you."

I went into the kitchen. Making coffee reminded me of the last morning I had spent with Terry. Serving him half a pot of black coffee before driving him across the border and saying goodbye to him forever in that sad, hard story that life sometimes writes for you. He wasn't supposed to be back here, his white hair dyed black, his bomb-shattered face repaired, drinking as though he had never kicked the booze. I heard him shuffling around in the living room. I was going to look, but the coffee hissed and poured into the lower flask then, so I made two cups and carried them into the living room. He wasn't there. I checked the bathroom and then went to the bedroom.

He had taken off his clothes and was lying face down on top of the coverlet, naked as a jaybird. He didn't turn to look at me, but a shimmering sort of twist went from his shoulders down his spine, and he drew up one leg a little. I turned around and walked back to the kitchen. I set the coffee down by the sink because there was no point in spilling it on the furniture. When I came back I took off my clothes, too, and left them folded on top of the chair where Terry had left his. His shirt smelled like perfume and Cuban cigarettes. It made me feel hot and stupid as a stallion.

I fumbled with the lid on the jar of Vaseline, and scooped up too much with my hand. I flexed my fingers as I walked to the bed, making the greasy stuff crackle. I wanted Terry to know what he was getting. Maybe I thought he would change his mind, but he hadn't left when I told him about Linda, and he didn't go now either. He just got up on his hands and knees. His head was hanging and his eyes were closed. I barged up against him like I was trying to start a fight, and Terry grunted and braced his elbows so he could shove back. He might have been fifteen years younger than me, but I was a lot bigger. Also, I wasn't so nice. I held his waist and gave it to him hard, all those months of grief and anger in the snap of my hips. He had bought me, body and soul, just by being a friend, and now he felt guilty about using me and lying to me. Well, he should feel guilty, I thought, and kept punching like a boxer.

Eventually Terry's arms gave out. I just shifted my grip to keep his backside in the air. I would have stopped if he asked, but we both knew he wasn't going to do that. He had tried to to relieve his conscience by paying me off, and when I gave him back his Madison, I left him with only one option, I guess. His body under mine, the two of us making a mess of the bedclothes.

At that, I slowed down a little. I didn't stop, but I pulled the two of us over onto our sides. That way I wasn't hitting and he wasn't shoving. I wasn't sure what I was thinking anymore, and it must have confused Terry, too, because for the first time he squirmed like he was trying to pull away. I wrapped my arms around his naked ribs, my belly against the small of his back and the tops of my knees pressed to the backs of his, cozy as a couple of sardines in a can. It felt good. Terry's breathing slowed down. When my heart didn't feel like a mariachi band in my chest anymore, I put my cheek on one of his pointed shoulder blades and asked him why he had really come back to Los Angeles.

He was quiet for so long I started to wonder if he had fallen asleep. Then he writhed back against me, just enough to let me know whatever was going on, he wasn't sleeping. "I bought a bookstore on Robertson," he said, as calm as you please.

"Have you lost your mind?" I wouldn't have been any more surprised if he had told me he had bought a piece of real estate on the moon. "Wouldn't it be easier to just walk into a station-house and turn yourself in to the police directly?"

He laughed softly. Good feelings spread up my body like sparks from a campfire. "I'm just the shadow partner," he said. "I found a gentleman who will actually manage the store for me. An out-of-work chauffeur who's very fond of Eliot."

I tightened my arms again and started moving, but this time it wasn't like a fight. It wasn't exactly like a dance either, but it was comfortable and easy. "Would you dare to eat a peach?" I asked him eventually. It was possible I wasn't thinking so clearly by then, but I was in good company. Terry rolled back against me.

"I don't know," he said thoughtfully. "I haven't read very much Eliot."

"Me neither," I agreed. "But I don't think he knows a thing about women."

"Neither do I," Terry said.

"Also, you don't know how to say goodbye worth a damn." I didn't hold that against him, though. I looped my arm over his shoulder, spread my hand across his chest, and touched my lips to his scarred right temple. It turned out a gimlet without bitters was no way to write an ending, either.


End file.
